Who’s That Girl? Meet Fernanda Ly, the Pink-Haired Model Who Stole the Louis Vuitton Show

As model Fernanda Ly leans against a Pepto pink backdrop in SoHo on a recent Monday afternoon, a pair of passersby stroll past and crane their necks—twice. The bubbly Australian beauty had better get used to it: She inspired a similar double-take reaction last week when she walked the Louis Vuitton runway in Paris, where her rose-colored hair set her apart instantly from a sea of leggy blonde and brunette counterparts, prompting a “who’s that girl?” refrain amongst showgoers seated inside **Nicolas Ghesquière’**s hypermodern set.

As it turns out, there were no pre-show trips to the salon or last-minute gimmicks leading up to Ly's statement-making debut at the fashion house’s fall show. The eighteen-year-old model has always taken her hair into her own hands. “I was fifteen when I started [dyeing it]. I did it because I felt like it,” says Ly of experimenting with her color, which has gone through several shocking shade changes. Most recently, “I tried to go to blonde, and it came out copper. It was a disgusting orange, so I dyed it red, and slowly made it lighter and lighter,” says Ly, who has also been through variations of lavender, silver, blue, dark blue, and countless gradations of ombré. A few years back, she bought a bottle of pink hair dye, which, she recalls, inspired “a shake of disapproval from my mother—but the damage was done!"

That game-changing decision eventually led to Ly being spotted in a Sydney shopping center at the age of sixteen. Soon after, “I sent my photos in [to an agency], and now I’m here,” says the model, who was on holiday early last week “when I received a call to go to Paris the next day for Louis Vuitton.”

Now back in New York for a few months, her look is attracting its fair share of attention—but it doesn’t draw any stares back home. As an architecture student at the University of Technology in Sydney, "there are a bunch of us with weird hair,” she says of her classmates, adding that, if anything, “it’s odd to have normal hair.”

So what’s the upkeep for her particular shade of watercolor pink? It’s easier than you think: Ly’s favorite products include Redken’s All Soft shampoo, daily conditioner, and hydrating mask. As for the dye she uses to get her exact color, she recommends Manic Panic’s Cotton Candy Pink, which was bright at first, but has naturally faded into a seafoam variation of the shade. To maintain the integrity of the color, she washes it every third day. And while some girls her age may dream of snapping up the white shearling polar bear coat she wore down the Vuitton runway come fall, Ly is more likely to be plotting her next above-the-neck transformation. “Everyone else saves up to buy clothes—but I buy hair dye,” she admits with a smile. With dedication like that, we’ll can't wait to see what turn her neon-toned strands will take next.